Don Gorvett was born in Boston, MA, in 1949 and raised within its environs of Cambridge and Somerville, MA. He spent his youth at the seashore swimming, fishing, and observing the fishing-town industry. The Gorvett family eventually moved to Burlington, MA, where high school art instructor Elinor Marvin discovered his talents. Don received an extraordinary art education focused on drawing, graphic arts, and theatrical set design. With the encouragement of Elinor Marvin and the support of Ogunquit summer resident Annabelle Lewis, Don began his summer-long painting excursions to Ogunquit, Maine, starting the summer before college in 1968. Mr. Gorvett attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts through the Ford Junior Fellowship Grant. After completing graduation requirements, Mr. Gorvett moved his primary residence to Gloucester, MA, to pursue a career in painting.
While in Gloucester, Don was introduced to Mrs. Buswell, heiress to the Jacobean-style Stillington Hall estate. She offered the well-furnished dressing rooms in the estate's theater to the artist to live and work. He set up his first etching press on the stage above his rooms. During his residence at Stillington Hall, he also organized classical music concerts and private wedding events. In 1990, Mr. Gorvett made Ogunquit his full-time home, where he continued to develop his reduction woodcut technique.
In 2006, Don Gorvett opened his first gallery with a printmaking studio in downtown Portsmouth, NH, called Piscataqua Fine Arts, named after the River dividing the southern boundaries of New Hampshire and Maine. In early 2019, Don moved the etching press and set up a new studio at the Beacon Marine Basin in Gloucester, MA. Don has renamed his popular Portsmouth gallery from Piscataqua Fine Arts to Don Gorvett Gallery. In Gloucester, the studio's spacious second-floor loft at the historic marina allows him to create new work, and studio visits are encouraged.
Don Gorvett woodcuts are in the permanent collections of public and private institutions such as the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA; Boston Athenaeum; Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA; Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; Portsmouth Historical Society, Portsmouth, NH; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA; and Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.
